First and foremost, 52% of all Americans pay no tax whatsoever. The problem with that is that the burden will be shifted more and more to "the rich", and the population of "the rich" will grow smaller and smaller.

You have to understand what "rich" means. A business with over a $1 million/year in revenue is "rich" - but is it? Lets say that business has $250,000 in machinery that it needs to function as a business. It also has 15 employees earning $50K on average a year. Thats a net profit of $250K. Between Federal, state, local and FICA, 55% of that is gone. Thats $112,500 in net profit. Out of that, they have to manage inventory, operating expenses, equipment maintenance and have enough left over to save for equipment refreshes every 3 years. Hardly rich at all, is it?

So, what happens when you raise taxes on this business? Option one - it goes out of business, reducing the number of "the rich", increasing the 52% paying nothing and making the tax burden on the remaining "rich" even steeper.

Option two - it relocates to a more business friendly location, like Mexico. It lays off its American workers, and becomes a Mexican company, no longer subject to US taxes - ain't NAFTA great? This ends up reducing the number of "the rich", increasing the 52% paying nothing and making the tax burden on the remaining "rich" even steeper.

Option three - it passes on the cost to the consumer. The consumer price index increases, entitlement payouts increase, the deficit increases, the percent of GDP the goes to service the debt increases. Taxes increase and the cycle begins again.

No matter how it plays out, the US economy implodes, exactly as it happened to the now defunct Soviet Union in the 80s. The US government will collapse and then ensuing new government will not be a strong republic, but a loose federation formed out of different regions of the US: the northeast, the midwest, the northwest, the southwest, the deep south and Texas.

China will become the major superpower. India will emerge as a economic powerhouse and Brazil will emerge as a world power in South America.

On the note of America and I suppose for other countries I think you can partially blame outsourcing which most countries are very very guilty of. If the decline is inevitable it's down to your governments, businesses whom outsource for cheap labor and manufacturer costs. Nothing against America, they aren't imo the only country in the world that's declining on so much more than economical levels. *shrugs*

I see three main issues:
(1) Americans and America itself has been living beyond it's means for a long time.
(2) The massive deregulation of the Financial Sector was a mistake.
(3) America is run by the rich, for the rich. The corruption in the government, the ultra rich, and the media perpetuates America's problems.

The idea that tax cuts for the richest Americans helps the economy create jobs is plain false. Anyone who says they believe that is either dumb or lying. It is an absolute farce to think America doesn't need to raise taxes. Watching Tea Party hooligans on CNN say raising taxes is off the table is a sign of the broken political system in the US. Taxes have to be raised across the board. Very Large Tax increases and Massive Spending Cuts are needed to get America out of it's troubles and I just can't see the political will to do it. Or America will look more like Greece every quarter.

The only thing that will ensure a more timely death would be to put the Republicans back in power in 2012. If that is the case, I'm afraid Nostradamus will be correct !

First and foremost, 52% of all Americans pay no tax whatsoever. The problem with that is that the burden will be shifted more and more to "the rich", and the population of "the rich" will grow smaller and smaller.

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I disagree with this. Much of the issues we have right now is because the decline is being shifted onto the poor, instead of the rich. Trickle-down economics doesn't work, greed supersedes it. America is a consumer based economy, and with the burden being put on the poor, less consumerism is going on; and thus the economy breaks down.
(clarification: people are spending more, but consuming less)

The other issue is fiat currency. The dollar is dead, and at this point, nothing can save it. You can't save the dollar by printing more, the only way would be to take a large chunk of the fiat dollar out of circulation... But this will never happen because our government believes (wrongly) in keynesian economics and they believe they can save business by printing more money and giving it to the failures.

Every empire that has fallen, has fallen not because they were conquered, but because they squandered their government budget. Once the poor can no longer support the government, the empire falls.

52% .. that seems high .. doesn't it ?
Well, didn't your mother tell you if it seems like too good a deal ... it probably is ?

Part of what makes American broken is the plain truth is spun so much ... average American Voters don't even come close to the truth. This stat that 52% of Americans pay no tax is just one clear example that truth in America is so spun that no one knows the truth.

Well I can tell you for a fact that as far as people I know are concerned about 50% is accurate on tax paying citizens.

Maybe I am just paranoid but in my opinion any government employee should not be allowed to have business interests outside of our country. Low level or high ranking. Take away the places where the rub happens and we can reap the benefits of revenues generated by business in our country...and while we are at it let's find the lobbyists a new line of work so they can stop brokering laws that suit private corporations. That would be a start.

The dollar is in an uncontrollable spiral downward and anyone who thinks quadrillions of dollars of debt is not proof ...well I don't know what to say to that.

You are all too paranoid. The US isn't going anywhere, and negative attitudes like this is what we don't need in office. I consider the Tea Party to be a start to the "change" that Obama failed to deliver on.

This amazes me and excuse my ignorance on how the American system works, or in this case doesn't work. How can 50+ percent of americans not pay TAX?

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How can someone live in the projects on state benefits..not pay for their own rent or food yet justify being able to afford an s55AMG? I can't really tell you myself for sure.

There is too many niches for this to fall under for me to try and cover all of them but suffice it to say just because the owner of a company has a tax ID doesn't means he pays unemployment tax for any specific employee. Any specific employee not accounted for on paper can be paid cash thus would also not be paying taxes unless they go out of their way to.

Example: Landscapers.

That is just a single example but there are tons...pretty much any laborious job that requires some skill has people not paying taxes...let's not forget about your $30,000 sidejob remodeling a house. You don't need a license to remodel your own house...and you could just be compensating me for helping you this one time.

Basically at this point there is just a stupid amount of people not working 9-5 jobs and certainly lot's of people who can't find work at all...skilled or unskilled.

For sure. I wasn't literally saying that pensions are the prime source of loss at all here but using it more of an example...if that kind of thing with the pension can happen right in front of the tax payers faces...what kinds of things happen behind closed doors was more of what I was implying. I just didn't wanna start my ranting

First and foremost, 52% of all Americans pay no tax whatsoever. The problem with that is that the burden will be shifted more and more to "the rich", and the population of "the rich" will grow smaller and smaller.

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Wrong, everyone pays some form of taxes whether it's sales taxes, or payroll taxes everyone pays taxes. If you had said roughly 50% of wage earners in U.S. pay little of no federal income tax you'd be right.

In 2008, which is the last year I can find data for, the bottom 50% of wage earners (those with an Adjusted Gross Income of less than $33,048) paid just 2.7% of the total income tax bill. By contrast the top 1% (those with an Adjusted Gross Income of $380,354 and up) paid 38.2% of the total income tax bill.

FWIW our debt problems wasn't caused by a lack of revenue, it's spending problem. If you look at the data over the last 50 years revenue to the federal government has remained remarkably consistent averaging roughly 18% of GDP. The federal government simply spends more money than it collects in taxes and fees and as a result has to borrow money to meet it's obligations.

Over the last decade government spending has risen to roughly 21% GDP under Pres. Bush and now to 25% of GDP under Pres. Obama. That has to change, we're $14.2 trillion in the whole.